Between Us

After

So here is a story I started a couple years ago, and I recently picked it back up. It's basically a rewrite of how things could've gone had Bellamy been able to hear Clarke's calls. Please review!

***

3019. -Two months after death wave-

She sits on the stool, elbows on the desk, gaze roving over the screens that reflect in her blue eyes. The computers have a lot to say, but she doesn't speak their language, not like Raven. She's learned some, though, enough to read between the lines; she knows radiation levels have not decreased since the death wave hit, sixty-nine days ago. She knows the bunker may have suffered damage, due to the severed radio connection and how her end only ever delivers a white static. Based off her scans, she knows there's no definitive way to be positive of her immunity to radiation. She doesn't need the computers to tell her she is running low on rations.

She takes a deep breath and grabs the radio head. Her pulse used to quicken when she pressed the receiver down. After a month of silence, it stopped doing that.

"This is Clarke Griffin," she says, feeling her voice bound about her, hollow. "It's day sixty-nine, and radiation levels still show no change. I've tried to contact the bunker, but without any luck." Clarke stops for a moment, just long enough to think about her next words. If she can bear them. "I don't know if they're alive," she whispers, "But I hope they are. I hope you are, Bellamy." Now she stops abruptly and drags in a deeper breath, one that burns her lungs. She clears her throat before continuing. "I'm fine on rations for now, but they won't last much longer. Anyone listening knows what that means." She pauses, as if letting the ghost of static fill in the space of someone's reply. She swallows tightly. "That's it," she says quietly. "I'll update again tomorrow."

She sets the radio back on the desk with a dull thud.

****

"Raven, you have to fix it."

"We've been over this, Blake. I can't. We're two thousand miles above the Earth's atmosphere. An atmosphere that is currently uninhabitable, courtesy of the end-of-the-world-take-two. Besides, no radio is operable through the amount of radiation that takes every frequency and plays jump rope with it."

Bellamy runs his fingers through his hair and clenches his jaw so tight, his jaw aches. Sixty nine days. Sixty nine days of being sealed back inside a metal world with seven other people, some of who he doesn't even like. And those of who he does, he finds himself liking less after two months kept within a three-hundred yard radius of one another.

For days, tensions have been on the rise, between Murphy and Monty, Emori and Echo. Himself and Echo. This ship is a condensed version of the Ark, but at least on the Ark there were quiet places to go. There had been privacy. Here it is harder to afford. At least, if feels like it. There are no woods to lose himself in. No streams to wash off a day's work. No life beyond the seven beings inside. As it turns out, it is easier to be born behind walls than to be forced back into them and after living under an endless sky, the ship is starting to feel less like their hope and more like their tomb. The sensation of feeling trapped is starting to put Bellamy's teeth on edge.

Particularly now, when his feelings of helplessness threaten to overwhelm his frustration. "You're the one who got the rocket up here," he grinds, standing beside Raven as she moves from screen to screen, eyes darting from one to the other in quiet assessment. "You were the one who said a hundred things could go wrong but we found a way to survive on this ship. And now you're telling me there is absolutely nothing we can do to salvage our connection with the others?"